Yvonne Ba­boolal

If you think 2010 road march, Palance, is some new kind of so­ca, you're wrong. It's very tra­di­tion­al, says for­mer UWI pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture and ca­lyp­so re­searcher, Dr Gor­don Rohlehr. Palance writer, Ker­nal Roberts sim­ply took the trum­pet line from a brass sec­tion and put a word to it, Rohlehr said. "The word palance doesn't mean any­thing. It's re­al­ly a rhythm." Col­in Lu­cas did the same thing in Dol­lar Wine, as well as sev­er­al oth­er artistes, Rohlehr said. "Tra­di­tions have be­come al­most sub­lim­i­nal. You are con­stant­ly lis­ten­ing to it with­out re­al­ly re­al­is­ing that it's in a new pack­age." Road march tra­di­tions go as far back as the 18th and 19th cen­turies, Rohlehr said. "Slaves brought from West Africa the call and re­sponse Kalin­da stick­fight­ing songs. Road march­es have this ba­sic call and re­sponse cho­rus." If some feel that Machel Mon­tano is try­ing some­thing new by in­cor­po­rat­ing rap, dance hall and dis­co in­to his mu­sic, they are wrong, too. That has been go­ing on for decades, Rohlehr said. "Ever hear about ca­lyp­so twist, ca­lyp­so mam­ba and soul train? Ca­lyp­so has al­ways ab­sorbed whatver mu­sic was avail­able. "Artistes are try­ing to cater to our cos­mopoli­tan so­ci­ety and dif­fer­ent mar­kets. "So what looks like a new break­through is re­al­ly a strug­gle for sur­vival," Rohlehr said.

Tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so dy­ing

Tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so may be dy­ing in the tents but it is grow­ing na­tion­al­ly, his­to­ri­an, The Mighty Chalk­dust (Hol­lis Liv­er­pool) said. "When I be­gan to sing ca­lyp­so in the 1960s, they used to have six fi­nal­ists in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. Now they have 15. "When I start­ed, they had 18 semi­fi­nal­ists. Now they have 35. "When I be­gan in ca­lyp­so, you could on­ly count 50 ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. Now, there are about 4,000," Chalkie said, prov­ing his point that ca­lyp­so is not dy­ing but, in fact, grow­ing. Con­tin­u­ing, he added: "When I start­ed there was no ca­lyp­so in schools. Now there is a pri­ma­ry schools' com­pe­ti­tion. Many in­sti­tu­tions and cor­po­ra­tions have ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions every year. "It can't be that it's dy­ing."

Where ca­lyp­so is dy­ing is in the tents, Chalkie said. "There are a num­ber of rea­sons, the chief of which is crime. You need a car to go to the tents and if you come with your car, they are break­ing in­to it." An­oth­er rea­son, is that fete pro­mot­ers have pulled a large sec­tion of tent go­ers away, Chalkie said. "At one time, peo­ple came to the tents to hear the jump-up ca­lyp­soes. But you get those in fetes now." A third rea­son for dy­ing ca­lyp­so tents is the type of ca­lyp­soes be­ing com­posed. "A lot of what you hear in the tents are not ca­lyp­soes, they are the writ­ings of jour­nal­ism," Chalkie said. The art of writ­ing a ca­lyp­so in­volves the use of satire, metaphors and fig­ures of speech, he not­ed. "A lot of ca­lyp­soes now are like nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion. When I talk, they get an­gry with me."

Em­pha­sis on rhythm

A road march ca­lyp­so in the 1940s was called a "leg­go" ca­lyp­so. Ras Shorty I in­tro­duced so­ca in the 1970s and, till then, the mu­sic was still slow, Chalk­dust said. "But by the eight­ies, the pace changed. So­ca artistes be­gan sam­pling the mu­sic of oth­er coun­tries like rap and reg­gae. "They be­gan to car­ry the mu­sic faster and faster," Chalkie not­ed, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of the road march. "While ex­per­i­ment­ing with oth­er types of mu­sic has been go­ing on a long time, the dif­fer­ence be­tween past and present road march­es is the lyri­cal con­tent, Chalkie said. "You could have un­der­stood the lyrics of past road march­es, even while danc­ing. "Artistes to­day go for the hook­line, like 'palance.' If you ask the av­er­age man to sing a Kitch­en­er or Spar­row road march, they could sing a whole verse. "If you ask them to sing a verse from Palance, they can't. Worse yet, last year's road march. "The em­pha­sis now is on rhythm and few lyrics." Chalkie said even steel­bands are hav­ing a hard time with to­day's road march­es. "They can't sit down and arrange one be­cause the melody is all over the place."

?Judges need train­ing

?Chalk­dust on re­sults of Ca­lyp­so Monarch:

Plac­ing sixth in last Sun­day's Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion did not cause eight-time win­ner, The Mighty Chalk­dust (Hol­lis Liv­er­pool) any wor­ry, but he had a prob­lem with the judg­ing. Chalkie made the com­ment while re­spond­ing to ques­tions about how he felt about the re­sults. "Plac­ing sixth was no wor­ry for me, but ca­lyp­so is very dif­fi­cult to judge. There are judges who have no train­ing and would put you all over the place." Not­ing that he didn't know who the judges were in the com­pe­ti­tion, he added: "...but I know that judges to­day need train­ing." Chalkie said he had of­fered him­self as a ca­lyp­so judge but was not ac­cept­ed. The judges made no mis­take about win­ner, Kurt Allen, who took home $1/2 mil­lion, for he has tal­ent and skill, Chalkie said. "If I lose one com­pe­ti­tion, it doesn't mat­ter."